Main menu

Post navigation

The Watering Hole; Friday January 2 2015; Atooi Revisited

Back in 2013, I posted here on The Zoo a description of an emergent kingdom in Polynesia called “Atooi” the idea behind which is, officially, “to live and build a lasting diverse community for the children of the Pacific and the world based on natural, organic and sustainable practices”— a concept I continue to most readily support and endorse, both for Polynesia and for other indigenous aboriginal peoples everywhere (and who knows, maybe their “sustainable” theses will one day rub off on us, the conquerors, with resultant benefit to our planet and even to ourselves ? ).

Anyway, and to make a long story short, I’ve recently been reexamining piles of old photographic files — old transparencies, digitized — and I ran across a handful that are both descriptive and reflective of my decades-ago visits to the Kingdom of Atooi’s northern pinnacle, the Hawaiian Islands. What I found once again tweaked both those old memories plus my far more recent interest in the Kingdom of Atooi, so I did a quick search and a moment later was logged onto the Atooi Kingdom home page. What really surprised me the most when I got there was that on their up-top-and-front home page was a link to a title that seemed vaguely familiar to me: “Atooi, The Newly Emergent Polynesian Kingdom” — my Zoo post from May of 2013! Far Out! Talk about running across the unexpected!

In any case, following are the half-dozen old (circa 1980) photographs taken at designated locations in the northern apex of the Kingdom of Atooi. Makes me wish I was fifty years younger — if so, I might find a way to get out there and offer to help out their Alii Nui! That’s not likely going to pop up on my rapidly aging horizon, however, so I guess the memories will have to suffice, including:

Atooi Jungle, also North Shore at Wainiha (Kauai)

*****

Windward Shores of Owhyhee (Hawaii) and Atooi (Kauai)

*****

Unidentified wild flower, and View of Sunrise over Hanelei Bay on Atooi (Kauai)

*****

So — Atooi remains an unbelievably attractive place until, of course, the impression of the European bootprint is overlaid atop the various geographies and cultures implicit. Still, if dreams and aspirations of The People were to be someday realized, then the only thing left for them to do to ensure longevity, prosperity, and environmental perfection will be to institute a single policy: NO REPUBLICANS ALLOWED EVER!

In a lengthy exploration of life aboard the International Space Station, Charles Fishman wonders about the future of humanity in space:

“We may eventually need resources from asteroids or the moon, depending on how we manage the resources we’ve got here on Earth. We may eventually need to become a multiplanet species—either because we literally outgrow the Earth, or because we damage it. Or we may simply want to become a multiplanet species: one day, some people may prefer the empty black silence of the moon, or the uncrowded red beauty of Mars, just as they preferred Oklahoma to Philadelphia in the 1890s.

These are long-horizon ideas—centuries-long. Even so, what’s missing from them is a sense of how hard living, working, and traveling in space still is, and how long we may need in order to change that.

We’re still at the beginning of the space age. More people can fit on a single commercial passenger jet, the Airbus A380, than have been in orbit. The Space Station’s most important purpose may turn out to be teaching us how to begin to make life in space more practical and less dangerous.

Almost anyone you talk with about the value of the Space Station eventually starts talking about Mars. When they do, it’s clear that we don’t yet have a very grown-up space program. The folks we send to space still don’t have any real autonomy, because no one was imagining having to “practice” autonomy when the station was designed and built. On a trip to Mars, the distances are so great that a single voice or e‑mail exchange would involve a 30-minute round-trip. That one change, among the thousand others that going to Mars would require, would alter the whole dynamic of life in space. The astronauts would have to handle things themselves.”

We may eventually need to become a multiplanet species—either because we literally outgrow the Earth, or because we damage it.

I’m thinking mass extinction is the better option, the option that would allow evolution to try again to come up with a genuinely ‘intelligent’ life form — i.e. a species mentally developed enough and with sufficient intelligence elevation to ensure that there will never be any Republicans.

Several University of Oregon football players are facing potential disciplinary action after celebrating their recent Rose Bowl win over Florida State University by chanting “no means no” — apparently in mockery of Florida’s quarterback, Jameis Winston, who was accused of sexually assault in a case that has been fraught with controversy for the past two years.

It was reported that right after the game, most of the FSU players left the field without congratulating the Oregon players. I wonder if one event affected the other. I didn’t watch the post-game coverage, because I went to the pre-game for the Sugar Bowl.

I don’t see how what the players did warrants disciplinary action, even if the chant was meant for Winston.

I guess I’m beginning to understand why I gave up following college sports a decade or more ago. And now there’re 38 bowl games? Really? Why? Cable TV? (I tossed that ten yrs ago too). Screwy screwy world out there.

Here’s the 2014 rundown of land preservation progress, courtesy of The Wilderness Society, and it includes some big and unexpected successes — esp. given the extreme polarization of Congress, not to mention the constant resistance to anything that doesn’t have to do with environmental destruction because money.

Before the Beverly Hillbillies, 1962-1971, in the 1959 Twilight Zone episode, “Eye of the Beholder,” Donna was the woman whose facial surgery failed to make her look like the others who were really grotesque. After the Hillbillies she appeared in Night Gallery, Adam-12, Love, American Style and some other TV shows.